Rather than talking about what others should do or consider for their data protection needs, for this post I wrote down some notes using my Livescribe about what I need and want for my environment. As part of walking the talk in future posts I’m going to expand a bit more on what I’m doing as well as considering for enhancements to my environment for data protection which consists of cloud, virtual and physical.

Why and what am I Protecting?

Livescribe notes that I used for creating the following content

What is my environment

Server and StorageIO (aka StorageIO) is a small business that is focused in and around data infrastructures which includes data protection as a result, have lots of data including videos, audio, images, presentations, reports, research as well, file serving as back-office applications. Then there are websites, blog, email and related applications, some of which are cloud based that are also part of my environment that have different availability, durable, and accessibility requirements.

My environment includes local on-site physical as well as virtual systems, mobile devices, as well as off-site resources including a dedicated private server (DPS) at a service provider. On one hand as a small business, I could easily move most if not everything into the cloud using an as a service model. However, I also have a lab and research environment for doing various things involving data infrastructure including data protection so why not leverage those for other things.

Why do I need to protect my information and data infrastructure?

Protect and preserve the business along with associated information as well as assets

Compliance (self and client based, PCI and other)

Security (logical and physical) and privacy to guard against theft, loss, instrusions

My wants – What I would like to have

Somebody else pay for it all, or exist in world where there are no threat risks to information (yeh right ;) )

Cost effective and value (not necessarily the cheapest, I also want it to work)

High availability and durability to protect against different threat risks (including myself)

Automated, magically to take care of everything enabled by unicorns and pixie dust ;).

My requirements – What I need (vs. want):

Support mix of physical, virtual and cloud applications, systems and data

Different applications and data, local and some that are mobile

Various operating environments including Windows and Linux

NOT have to change my environment to meet limits of a particular solution or approach

Need a solution (s) that fit my needs and that can scale, evolve as well as enable change when my environment does

Also leverage what I have while supporting new things

Wrap and summary (for now)

Taking a step back to look at a high-level of what my data protection needs are involves looking at business requirements along with various threat risks, not to mention technical considerations. In a future post I will outline what I am doing as well as considering for enhancements or other changes along with different tools, technologies used in hybrid ways. Watch for more posts in this ongoing series of the data protection dairies via www.dataprotectiondiaries.com.